Industry News

The true picture of energy company complaints

Which? launches a new campaign calling for six fixes for the broken energy market as the first full year of official figures from the Big Six energy companies reveal that they received more than 5.5 million complaints in 2013.

Since October 2012, the biggest energy companies (British Gas, EDF Energy, E.On, Npower, Scottish Power and SSE) have published data showing how many complaints they’ve received from customers. From 1st January to 31st December 2013 this totalled 5,579,665 complaints.

The type of customer complaints that the companies receive ranged from issues with bills, metering, customer service, switching through to payment. Which? is recommending six fixes for the energy market, which includes addressing dwindling consumer trust and asking energy companies to end practices that unfairly increase costs and damage the level of customer service.

Of the 5,579,665 complaints in 2013, Npower received 1,383,650, the most out of all six companies. They were followed by EDF with 1,240,005, British Gas with 1,235,550 and Eon with 929,230. Both SSE and Scottish Power received fewer total complaints for 2013 with 482,582 and 308,648 complaints respectively.

The quarter with the highest total number of complaints for all six companies in 2013 was quarter 4 (1st October 2013 31st December 2013) when 1,492,065 were received.

These latest complaints figures from the six companies that account for 97% of the market, are yet another indication that the energy market is not working for its customers.

Which?’s latest consumer tracking shows that eight in 10 are worried about rising energy prices and just one in five trust gas and electricity suppliers. Which? wants an industry that works for customers as well as shareholders, where prices are kept as low as possible and people can trust companies to give them a good deal.

Which? has launched a new campaign that calls on Government, the regulator, competition authorities and the energy companies to drive forward radical reforms to fix the broken energy market.

We are calling for six fixes to the energy market:

Fix No.1. Increase Competition

Fix No.2. Transparent Trading

Fix No.3. People Power

Fix No.4. Cost Control

Fix No.5. Customer Trust

FIX NO.6. WARMER HOMES

Which? executive director, Richard Lloyd, said:
“Millions of people are unhappy with the service they receive from the suppliers which, combined with low levels of trust is yet more evidence that more must be done to fix the broken energy market.

“Next month we want the regulators to refer the energy market to the Competition and Markets Authority and launch a full scale inquiry. This is the first and most important step towards a more radical reform of the energy market, giving hard-pressed consumers the confidence that they are paying a fair price.”